Advertisement
After another night train, followed by a bus, we arrived in La Paz, the capital of Bolivia. On the way we got stuck just outside La Paz due to a protest, people had laid rocks in the middle of the road preventing any cars or buses from passing. We had to travel round the back roads, along dirt tracks which became an interesting side trip when someone had to get out of the bus and, using a wooden stick, lift up the electricity wires over the road so the bus could pass under them!!!
So we finally made it to La Paz, a city nestled in the side of a mountain, with buildings clinging on to the side and in the distance we could see through the haze Mt Illamani which is over 6400 meters high and covered in snow. We spent our last few days in Bolivia here looking around shops and walking around the cobbles streets, looking at the markets. Everywhere generally sells the same items, alpaca hats, gloves, jumpers bags, purses etc... things are so cheap, if only we had more room in the backpack!!
Some of the roads in Bolivia are not the best, and
this can certainly be said for the road between La Cumbra to Coroico just outside La Paz... more commonly known as the Worlds Most Dangerous Road! The 64km road starts at just below 5000 meters and ends 3600 meters lower, some parts of the road are no more than 3.2 meters wide, with no guardrails and sometimes 800 meter drops to the side! Only a few years ago did the Bolivian government change the road to one-way traffic, before then you could travel up and down and many accidents happened along the way with many fatalities. Now it is a tourist attraction where you can ride a mountain bike along the course. Not exactly enjoying bike riding at the best of times and having a fear of heights, Simon left me in La Paz to enjoying shopping while he took the bike challenge...
We were recommended to use Gravity Assisted Mountain Biking, a tour agency who were really professional and went through the safety procedures before we even left the office. They had brand new bikes with full suspension and even hydraulic brakes, so they did everything they could to make it as safe as possible. We started on
a tarmac road for about 20km, all downhill, where we all really picked up speed and got to test the bikes out before hitting the real ´Death Road´, which is all gravel. Once we hit the gravel, we stopped every now and again so they could check the bikes out, and tell us yet another story of someone going off the side of the cliff where we were standing... someone apparently cycled straight off because he was watching a bird in the sky...
Needless to say I was concentrating 100% on the road and only when we stopped could I take a look at the fantastic scenery that we were hurtling past! According to Bolivian traffic laws, people coming uphill have the right of way, so we all had to cycle on the left hand side of the road... closest to the cliff... at times I was less than half a metre away from a sheer drop into oblivion! At one point, we stopped for a quick bite to eat and we heard a massive horn blasting through the valley. A huge dump truck was making it´s way up the road... and just coming through the narrowest part as
we were watching it! I was so glad we were taking a break at the time!
It was pretty tiring by the time we reached the end, especially after the uphill sections we cycled through. The whole group made it unscathed, and we all enjoyed a couple of hours relaxing at an animal sanctuary at the end of the course... enjoying a well deserved beer or two! Of course, we then had to make it back to La Paz, but luckily we were driven up the new road in the mini-bus... although that still was pretty scary when the driver decided to overtake people on a blind corner with nothing between us and a 500m drop! Everyone was relieved to get back to La Paz afterwards, and Elaine was certainly relieved I got back in one piece! Definitely one of the best things I have done all year though!!!
Before we travelled through Bolivia we had heard mixed reviews about the country especially about dodgy food, but other than the odd cold shower in the hotels, we had an absolutely fantastic time, probably the best in South America so far!!! Some of the city's, such as Sucre, were
stunning and we never had any problems trying to find good food along the way. Luckily we coped OK with the altitude as pretty much most of the country is above 3000 meters. Hopefully this will help us in Peru, especially on the Inca Trail in a couple of weeks...
Advertisement
Tot: 0.125s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 10; qc: 66; dbt: 0.0898s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb